3 Important Areas for New Zealand Seabirds Sites at Sea Seaward extensions, pelagic areas IMPORTANT AREAS FOR NEW ZEALAND SEABIRDS This document has been prepared for Forest & Bird by Chris Gaskin, IBA Project Coordinator (NZ). The Royal Forest & Bird Protection Society of New Zealand Level One, 90 Ghuznee Street PO Box 631 Wellington 6140 NEW ZEALAND This report is available from the Forest & Bird website in pdf form. © Copyright June 2014, Forest & Bird Contributors The following individuals have contributed to the IBA project in a variety of ways, including supply of data and information about seabirds, and reviewing draft material, site profiles, species lists and site maps. Philippa Agnew, Sandy Bartle, Biz Bell, Mike Bell, Dennis Buurman, Lynette Buurman, Andrew Crossland, Igor Debski, Todd Dennis, Lorna Deppe, Barry Dunnett, Ursula Ellenberg, Graeme Elliott, Peter Frost, Jo Hiscock, Dave Houston, Grant Humphries, Jon Irvine, Stefanie Ismar, Chris Lalas, Todd Landers, Ben Lascelles, David Lawrie, Graeme Loh, Phil Lyver, Gabriel Machovsky-Capuska, Nikki McArthur, Bruce McKinlay, Thomas Mattern, Sue Maturin, Gary Melville, Mark Miller, Kyle Morrison, Don Neale, Matt Rayner, Yvan Richard, Adrien Riegen, Andy Roberts, Christopher Robertson, Paul Sagar, Rob Schuckard, Paul Scofield, Phil Seddon, Hadoram Shirihai, Jean-Claude Stahl, Graeme Taylor, Phil Taylor, Alan Tennyson, David Thompson, Leigh Torres, Yolanda Van Heezik, Kath Walker, Susan Waugh. Recommended citation: Forest & Bird (2014). New Zealand Seabirds: Sites at Sea, Seaward Extensions, Pelagic Areas. The Royal Forest & Bird Pro- tection Society of New Zealand, Wellington, New Zealand. pp. Front cover: Snares Penguins diving through bull kelp, Snares Islands. Photo: Kim Westerskov Facing page (top): NZ White-capped and Chatham Albatrosses, off Rakiura (Stewart Island). Photo: Jon Irvine Facing page (bottom): Buller’s Shearwaters feeding in association with a trevally school, Hauraki Gulf. Photo: Karen Baird Back cover: Gibson’s Albatross, Adams Island. Photo: Kath Walker Marine Important Bird Areas Given the long periods that seabirds spend at sea, the multiple threats they face there and the vast distances they cover, identifying a network of priority sites for their conservation in the marine environment is critical to ensure their future survival. Determining seabird high-use areas and the identification of marine IBAs will make a vital contribution to initiatives to gain greater protection. This will include valuable input to the identification of Marine Protected Areas and will also contribute to efforts to ensure sustainable management of New Zealand’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). The identification of marine IBAs globally has necessitated a significant amount of effort to source, collate and analyse bird distribution data in order to be able to locate sites and develop site boundaries in often apparently feature- less seascapes. Global Criteria for Marine IBAs So far only two of the global IBA criteria have been applied in the marine environment: A1 Regular presence of threatened species A4 More than 1% of global population regularly occurring. There are four aspects of the annual cycles of seabirds where they are most likely to occur in IBA threshold numbers. These are: 1. Seaward extensions to breeding colonies 2. Coastal congregations of non-breeding seabirds 3. Migration hotspots and pathways 4. Important areas for pelagic species. 2 1 SEAWARD EXTENSIONS Seaward extensions to breeding colonies provide one method for marine IBA identification. While many seabird breeding colonies have already been identified as IBAs, their boundaries have been, in almost all cases, confined to the land on which the colonies are located. The boundaries of these sites can, in many cases, be extended to include those parts of the marine environment which are used by the colony for feeding, maintenance behaviours and social interactions. Such extensions are limited by the foraging range, depth and/or habitat preferences of the species concerned. The seaward boundary is, as far as possible, colony and/or species-specific, based on known or estimated foraging and maintenance behaviour. The BirdLife Seabird Foraging Range Database includes published information on the foraging distances, preferences and behaviours of (primarily coastal) seabirds while breeding. At-sea data have been used elsewhere in the world to define the likely boundaries of key foraging and rafting areas adjacent to seabird breeding colonies, which can be included as marine IBAs. However, few New Zealand breeding species are in the foraging range database. To identify New Zealand marine IBAs in coastal and continental shelf areas, surrogates have been drawn from the data- base. In addition, expert opinion has been used to provide ‘provisional choices’ for foraging distances to draft provisional boundaries for seaward extensions to colonies. This review also draws on published and unpublished data including forag- ing ranges, dive depth limits for some species, and bathymetry. As new tracking data becomes available, these areas will be further refined, or, in some species, eg. Buller’s, Fluttering and Hutton’s Shearwaters, used to create separate marine IBAs in pelagic areas as more is known about their distribution during various stages of their breeding cycles. It is important to note that seaward extensions, particularly around islands, also capture the passage of pelagic species to and from colonies, and congregations close to breeding islands (eg. Cook’s Petrel, Buller’s and Sooty Shearwaters). In some areas (eg. Kermadec Islands) foraging by pelagic species can be very close to colonies (ie. White-naped (White- necked) and Black-winged Petrels, Wedge-tailed Shearwater). In the case of Cook Strait or stretches of coastline, the movement through bottleneck areas will also be captured Shearwaters and Fairy Prions, Hauraki Gulf. Photo: Jon Irvine 3 Site entries in Section 1 Sites must meet the global criteria to be identified as marine IBA. A1 Regular presence of threatened species - ie. more than threshold numbers of one or more globally threatened species. A4 More than one percent of the world population of one or more congregatory species A4ii 1% global population (see Appendix 2) A4iii 10,000 pairs seabirds or 20,000 individuals water-birds. Also, IBAs cannot overlap, hence the ‘nesting’ of sites (e.g. North Otago, Dunedin Coast and South Otago with Southern South Island; Chatham Islands with Chatham; Marlborough Sounds with Cook Strait ). Code: Each New Zealand IBA has been allocated a unique code; this and accompanying information together with popula- tion estimates and other details have been entered into the World Bird Database administered by BirdLife International and Conservation International. IBA Trigger Species: These are species that meet threshold numbers for global IBA criteria. IUCN/BirdLife International nomenclature is used for ‘trigger species’, New Zealand names are given in parentheses, e.g. Great-winged (Grey-faced) Petrel, Magenta Petrel (Chatham Island Taiko), as per OSNZ (Ornithological Society of New Zealand) Checklist Committee 2010. Checklist of the birds of New Zealand, Norfolk and Macquarie Islands, and the Ross Dependency, Antarctica. 4th edition. Te Papa Press, Wellington. 464pp. Tracking is listed as the primary data source. This is from data held in the Ocean Wanderers Global Seabird Tracking Data- base - for a list of data suppliers to the Ocean Wanderers Global Seabird Tracking Database, see Table 3. Supporting data are listed in profiles, also in Table 1 (suggested foraging ranges). Activity covers foraging, passage or movement through a marine IBA (including threatened species breeding outside that region, also listed as trigger species if regular occurrence can be shown and numbers are likely to meet thresholds); social maintenance (if known); congregations including dense rafting (e.g. Buller’s, Sooty, Fluttering and Hutton’s Shearwaters) and loose aggregations (e.g. Cook’s Petrels). Where a site has more than 10,000 pairs of seabirds then it is listed as ‘Species group - seabirds A4iii’. The A4iii criterion can include one or more species with a number of these not included as trigger species (e.g. Little Penguin, Pied Shag, Southern Black-backed Gull). Protected areas: Areas such a marine reserves, marine mammal protection zones, cable zones (i.e. no fishing) which po- tentially benefit seabirds are listed. Maps: These show proposed marine IBA boundaries. Seabird colonies: Sites shown on maps in this document are those for trigger species. NB: They do not include all seabird colonies. Contributors: A full list of contributors to the project will also be listed in the opening page of this publication. Data pro- viders for tracking are listed in Table 3. 4 5 NZ M001 Kermadec Location New Zealand, Kermadec IBA criteria (see page 14) A1, A4ii, A4iii Area 43,462 km2 Year of Assessment 2013 IBA trigger species: Species Tracking Supporting data Activity IBA criteria IUC Grey Noddy (Grey Ternlet) Seaward extension (35km), Foraging A4ii LC observations Sooty Tern 1 Seaward extension (80km), Foraging, passage A4ii LC observations White-necked (White-naped) Petrel 2 Observations, diet Foraging, passage A1, A4ii VU Black-winged Petrel 2 GLS Observations, diet Foraging, passage A4ii LC Kermadec Petrel 2 Observations, diet Foraging, passage A4ii LC Wedge-tailed Shearwater 2 Observations, diet Foraging, rafting, A4ii LC passage Little Shearwater 2 Observations, diet Foraging,